Intel’s plan to fix Meltdown in silicon after microcode failures

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich has notified the investors about the company’s plans to release silicon with built-in alleviations to the much talked about Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities at a later stage this year.

2017 proved to be somewhat bitter sweet for Intel, when it had the best quarter in its history owing to the fourth-quarter 2017 revenue growth of 4 percent year-over-year to $17.1 billion. It also had to face Spectre and Meltdown, 2 critical vulnerabilities found to be present in every processor they make.

Intel initially had been working with PC manufacturers and OS developers such as Microsoft to release microcode including the aforementioned alleviations and microcode updates that fix the vulnerabilities. But it didn’t go as planned, Intel had to urge users to stop applying patches as the systems were unexpectedly rebooting. So, it was normal to expect Intel to be working on a more permanent remedy, although its actual impact on users remains to be unknown.

Security is the top priority for Intel

Krzanich, in a conference call with the investors told, “Security is a top priority for Intel, foundational to our products, and it’s critical to the expanse of our data-centric strategy.” He further added, “Our near-term focus is on delivering high-quality mitigations to protect our customers’ infrastructure from these exploits. We’re working to create silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats in hardware. And those products will begin appearing later this year.”

Krzanich also reinstated that the vulnerabilities won’t have an effect on future sales, “I can tell you, at the highest level, that we’re not seeing much of a change in those forecasts as a result of this,” he said of all that is going on surrounding the vulnerabilities.

He added, “I’ve assigned some of the very best minds at Intel to work through this.”

Although Krzanich cleared doubts about Intel’s plans to mitigate the vulnerabilities, there are still some questions left unanswered for the consumers.

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